General Spider Taxonomy

What makes Spiders different from other Organisms?

          We classify organisms into categories based on their relationships to one another. Such man-made classifications are subject to differing, and frequently changing, schools of thought. Much, sometimes heated, disagreement exists within the scientific community on the direction such classifications should take.

          Spiders are araneaen arachnids. As such, they are members of the kingdom Animalia (organisms that are typically motile, multicellular, eukaryotic, and heterotrophic), the phylum Arthropoda (invertebrates with segmented bodies and jointed limbs), the subphylum Chelicerata (arthropods with at least six pairs of appendages, including four pairs of walking legs, a pair of chelicerae, and a pair of pedipalps), the class Arachnida (chelicerates with two body parts, and book lungs or tracheae), and the order Araneae (arachnids whose chelicerae have been modified to inject venom, abdominal appendages modified into spinnerets that extrude silk, and limbs without extensor muscles that are extended by hydraulic pressure).

          The order Araneae is divided into two suborders, the Mesothelae (primitive araneaens with segmented plates on their abdomens, today restricted to a limited geographical range in Southeast Asia), and the Opisthothelae (more advanced spiders that do not have segmented plates on their abdomens). The suborder Opisthothelae  is further divided into two infraorders, the Mygalomorphae (spiders with rake-like fangs and four book lungs) and the Araneomorphae (spiders with scissors-like fangs, and--usually--one pair of book lungs).

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